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2007-08-17-COL Charles Colson Interview Transcription Page 1 of 50 August 17, 2007

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2007-08-17-COL Charles Colson Interview Transcription Page 1 of 50 August 17, 2007 2007-08-17-COL Charles Colson Interview Transcription Page 1 of 50 August 17, 2007 Timothy Naftali Hi, I'm Tim Naftali, director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library Museum. Today is August 17, 2007. I am here with the Reverend Charles Colson. Charles Colson Actually, just Chuck Colson because I'm not ordained. I'm a layman working full-time in ministry, however. Timothy Naftali Well, then it's my pleasure to be with Chuck Colson -- Charles Colson Right. Timothy Naftali -- in Naples, Florida. Charles Colson Lovely place. Timothy Naftali Thank you for joining us to participate in the Richard Nixon Presidential History Program. Charles Colson Happy to do it. Timothy Naftali I'd like to start in Massachusetts. I'd like to ask you a little bit about your political education working with Leverett Saltonstall. Charles Colson Well, when I came out of the Marines I came right to Washington to go to law school at night and met one of the senator's assistants. And so, by a remarkable set of circumstances, I ended up at age 25 in the office of the United States Senator in the number two job in the office, and two years later became his administrative assistant. I was certainly on the fast track. I loved politics. I had studied political philosophy at Brown University; that was my undergraduate degree. I was going to law school 2007-08-17-COL Charles Colson Interview Transcription Page 2 of 50 August 17, 2007 with an emphasis on constitutional law, so I was fascinated by government. As a kid I'd handed out leaflets on street corners back home in Massachusetts and really had a dream that someday I might be able to do something significant in politics, not because at that stage at least I thought I was looking for power, I really loved the satisfaction of seeing things done that changed the way people live. And I had a wonderful five years working, or four-and-a-half years working, with Leverett Saltonstall. He was a distinguished public servant. He really cared about the common good. He was not partisan; he was very bipartisan in his approach. I was the partisan. My job as his administrative assistant was to get him re-elected in 1960, and it was a formidable task. First, I'd never run a political campaign. Secondly, John Kennedy was on the ticket from Massachusetts the same year we were running as Republicans on the other side of the ticket, and the polls showed us way behind. So I started out the campaign having had no experience at it, figuring out what turned out to be some pretty good strategies, and we ended up winning it with an 800,000-vote split between Kennedy and Nixon -- between Kennedy and Saltonstall. So that was my introduction to politics. That was a baptism by fire. During that period of time I got to know Richard Nixon. He was Vice President, and I would take things to him periodically. Saltonstall being a senior senator, Nixon being Vice President, they would have a lot of occasion to deal with one another. So I had a fair amount of personal face-to-face contact with Nixon. I was dazzled by the man. I found him to be extraordinarily well motivated, very idealistic, very keen, wonderful mind, uncommon intellect. And we became friends of sorts; I mean acquaintances I would say, politically. And after I left Senator Saltonstall's office to practice law ended up in 1962 in Richard Nixon's -- I'm sorry, can I stop that? You're on digital, aren't you? Timothy Naftali That's okay. Go ahead, just stop and -- Charles Colson Just fix it. I ended up in 1964 sitting in Richard Nixon's law office in New York plotting how he might get the nomination that year. So I never really left politics. I was practicing law, but I never really left it. Timothy Naftali Let me ask you about -- before we move to '64, because I know something very interesting happened then -- what was a Massachusetts Republican? How would you describe -- what was a Massachusetts Republican in that era? Charles Colson Well, we would tend to be more liberal, middle of the road, certainly than the Orange County crowd, or the then burgeoning conservative movement. Probably burgeoning is the wrong word. It was emerging from Barry Goldwater and the new guard, as opposed to the old country club Christian -- the old country club Republicans, which would be the case for Massachusetts. I was a misfit because I was a bit of an ideologue conservative, having studied Russell Kirk and Edmund Burke in college and really interested in -- I really got very involved with Barry Goldwater and with some of the young, at that time, young conservative activists on Capitol Hill. So I was very much at home with the Orange County crowd and very much at home with Richard Nixon, even though I came from that bastion of the liberal elite, which Nixon so disdained. 2007-08-17-COL Charles Colson Interview Transcription Page 3 of 50 August 17, 2007 Timothy Naftali So it's '64 and you write him a memorandum? Charles Colson I did. I realized Goldwater was going to get the nomination, but I didn't think he could win. I didn't want to see a liberal candidate beat him. I thought Nixon was the one candidate who would have the credentials to debate and possibly beat Lyndon Johnson. And so I wrote him a memorandum in the spring telling him why I thought he should run, why I thought he should step in, why if the convention would have deadlocked he would be the perfect candidate, why he should be maneuvering himself to get in position to run if he could. He invited me to New York. We spent some time together, went up to his apartment one evening. He talked about his vision for foreign policy and his ideas about NATO and the North Atlantic alliances and the emerging alliances in the world, the dangers of communism. It was a fascinating evening. And he said to me, riding in his car, he said, "You know, if I get in this campaign to run for President," he said, "I just can't face all those same tired pedestrian faces that hung around me in 1960." He said, "I need some fresh blood. Would you come in and help run the campaign?" And, of course, I bit at that immediately because I would love to – I, at that point, would have loved to have worked for Richard Nixon. But I did some surveying, which he asked me to do, of congressmen and political leaders and got few takers. I think the Goldwater machine had it pretty well locked up. So it was an idea that fell short; he obviously did not run. Timothy Naftali How many of the inner circle shared this optimism that perhaps there could be a brokered convention in '64? Charles Colson Buchanan was one of them. He was in the Nixon office, the law office, and working with him. I don't think Haldeman or Ehrlichman; at least if they did I had no contact with them. I don't know. I don't think there were very many. Timothy Naftali But so from 1964 on he sees you as someone he can bat ideas around with? Charles Colson Yeah, he did not much until '68. When he formed his campaign, which was very successful, to go out and win Congressional friends in the '66 election, I was not involved. I got some invitations to be involved, but that was a difficult time. I was building my law practice, and I would have gotten into a Presidential campaign but didn't get into that. So I didn't have that much contact with him until the '68 campaign when I assisted working through Bryce Harlow and a few others on the campaign that I knew well, Bob Ellsworth, assisted in some of the issue papers. I then ended up taking a leave of absence from my law firm for four months and working full-time at it sharing an office in New York at the headquarters with, of all people, Alan Greenspan -- he was doing domestic policy -- and Dick Allen. 2007-08-17-COL Charles Colson Interview Transcription Page 4 of 50 August 17, 2007 Timothy Naftali How confident were you in '68 that he'd be elected? Charles Colson Not at all. We'd seen what happened in 1960 how easily the lead could evaporate. I crossed swords for the first time, and not the last, in the 1968 campaign with John Mitchell. John Mitchell felt he had a lead and he wanted to sit on it, and I thought that was dumb politics, because momentum is everything in political campaigns. You're either rising or you're falling; you're not sitting still. And I thought it was important that Nixon make a really concerted push. And I particularly saw an opportunity to do what Truman had done so effectively in 1948, and that's put a coalition together of particular interest groups that felt left out by the Democratic Party to form what I saw in '68 and then articulated in '70 and '72 this new emerging conservative majority in America. So I got into some squabbles with Mitchell over that. I was a bit on the outside because Mitchell had pretty well cornered Nixon's ear.
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